


Badlands

by knifeeyes



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Abandonment, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, M/M, Morty is angsty as hell, Rating May Change, Rick Leaves, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 04:51:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12574116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knifeeyes/pseuds/knifeeyes
Summary: After their meeting with Unity reveals more than Morty wanted, Rick leaves without a word. Morty is left to pick up the pieces living with Rick has left him in.





	Badlands

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! This is my first foray into Rick and Morty fic, so bare with me as I try and get their characterizations and speech patterns down as best I can. This is a story that focuses a lot on their inner thoughts and shit, so if those parts are a little OC, I apologize but I'm a sucker for deep, emotional trauma angsty nonsense. I've also kinda based this on inspiration from Halsey's 'Badlands' so If some of it is familiar, you know why! 
> 
> All of the italicized parts are Morty’s thoughts. 
> 
> This also isn't beta-d, so any mistakes are mine and mine alone. Anyways, enough rambling! Enjoy!

**_1._ ** **_Ghost_ **

_“I’ll be in the garage…”_

He’d spoken those words _months ago._ The last sentence he’d let slip past vodka stained lips, the last sentence Morty heard him utter, it was a lie. He wasn’t in the garage when Morty went to check on him hours later, nor was his ship. The only proof that Rick had ever been there were the faint scorch marks on the walls that singed the brown paint, and a pin board with unintelligible numbers and letters on scraps of paper tacked to it.

 

_That w-w-was it, that was all he left._

 

When Morty hadn’t seen Rick in a week, he quietly knew he’d left for good again, even if he never spoke his fears out loud. His parents swore up and down that Rick would be back, but they didn’t know him like Morty did, they didn’t see the look in his eye as he turned out of the room, that one last time. Morty just knew, and he knew not to cling to a false hope of a return, or some triumphant green portal appearing in the garage, with a slightly singed and grinning Rick waltzing through it like he’d never left.

 

_No, he knew better now._

It stopped Morty’s breath and stilled his heartbeat for a moment every time he climbed the stairs to his bedroom, passing Rick’s along the way. Three days after Rick had left, Morty sat slumped, passed out on the carpet in front of his door, only to be woken by Summer who stared at him with a look he’d never seen before and never wanted to see again. She never brought it up, and he was could breathe a little easier for it. Morty was just thankful that Rick kept his bedroom door locked, making it far easier for him to imagine the room didn’t exist at all, pretending it was another closet or something as he walked down the hallway to his own room, softly shutting the door behind him.

 

The pull to go in to Rick’s room grew stronger and stronger the more Morty tried not to think about it, the temptation making him sick to his stomach each time it crossed his mind. He found it hard to eat, to concentrate, to breathe. School passed in blips, memories of stunted conversations and classes, and he found he cared even less about it all than when he’d skip it and adventure with Rick. Morty eventually stopped going all together, and Beth said nothing when he slept through the day, school long over by the time he woke up in a dark, silent bedroom. Those were the days he found himself wishing his bed would split down the middle and swallow him up.

 

It took three months of sleeping constantly and forgoing food for silence for Beth and Jerry to notice something had changed. He noticed it too, but pretended he didn’t. He could see his ribs poking through sallow skin more prominently than they ever did, he could tell the bags under his sunken eyes had turned a bruised shade of purple. But none of it mattered to him anymore, his purpose had ceased to exist, and he had allowed himself to begin fading too. Morty was constantly searching for something that he couldn’t seem to reach, only finding fleeting glimpses of Rick in his dreams among moments of growled insults and the smell of space that still lingered in his senses when he woke up sweating.

 

One night as Morty lay awake, staring at his ceiling, his thoughts drifted to the day Rick left.

_Unity._

 

That fucking hive mind, quick to suck his grandfather in but even quicker to toss him away once they’d figured out he was far too wild to be assimilated.

 

 _Serves her right._ _She n-n-n-never deserved him to begin with._

 

Morty remembered the look on Rick’s face when he’d opened the portal for Summer and him, he could pinpoint the moment that Rick knew it was jealousy that lurked in Morty’s eyes as he stared between Rick and Unity, trying to get him to come home. And yet they’d never said a word about it to each other because Rick had chosen that night to just up and fucking leave, and Morty hated him with every fiber of his being for doing that.

 

_He’s always so fucking quick to tell me g-goodbye._

Based on Rick’s previous sexual endeavors, Morty knew what he was after, he may have been young but he wasn’t nearly as stupid as Rick liked to remind him he was. Rick liked them dangerous, unobtainable and wild. He wanted the ones that hurt before, during and after the act itself, the ones who lingered like burns on skin that itched and peeled as they healed into shiny patches of skin.

 

Morty knew, and yet he still let himself believe that Rick loved him enough to look past it all. Morty had fallen for his white lies, coming from Rick far too easily and yet he couldn’t find it in himself to tell him to fuck off. The thoughts of lingered touches and occasional praise left him humming from the inside out and it was more than enough to break Morty’s resolve, to forgive when he really shouldn’t have. It wasn’t something that he liked to think about, but the notion had become too large to be shoved to the back of his mind anymore.

 

He knew it was wrong, and sick and disgusting, of course he fucking knew, but his mind went to those places and after years of being so alone, he stopped fighting to pull it back. It made him sick to his stomach to think about Rick as anything more than his grandfather, but years of defying death in the name of science left him with less social interaction and more Rick, and so he justified it. He loved him, despite all the other warning signs telling him not to.

 

_My brain m-m-must be caving in…just, just like the rest of me._

He remembered something Rick had said once, after they had returned from one of their more harrowing adventures. Rick had stumbled into Morty’s room, reeking of whiskey and sweat, as he carelessly dropped himself onto Morty’s bed, his lab coat burnt and frayed.

 

_“I’m n-no good for you, MoOUGHrty. You, you’re a good kid…a-a-and I’m a fucking disaster. You’re tugging…you’re always right there when I neURGHed you, tugging at my sleeves and getting under my f-f-fucking feet but you’re…a good kid. I…” Rick had fallen asleep in the middle of his sentence, and Morty could only roll his eyes and turn over, trying to fall asleep._

Morty sighed sadly at the memory fading from his mind, and yet in that moment, he knew what he had to do. Swinging his legs out of bed, Morty padded quietly to his bedroom door and listened for a moment. The house was silent as he walked down the hallway, it being close to two in the morning, and came to a halt outside of Rick’s bedroom. Placing his hand on the doorknob, he turned it slowly, expecting it to resist, but was met with the smooth swing of the door as it opened inwards, revealing Rick’s room. He took a step into the dark and shivered violently, his suddenly watery eyes cast over the shapes and piles and _shit_ that Rick had laying around.

 

The smell in the room was overwhelming, alcohol and sweat and _Rick, pure and concentrated_ and it hit him all at once. That alone nearly caused Morty to double over as the sudden rush of memories hit his olfactory system. Suddenly dizzy, Morty shut the door behind him and flipped the light switch, illuminating the mess around him as he held the doorframe for balance. His bleary eyes scanned the room, finding boxes full of half finished experiments that sat stacked to his left, old blue shirts draped over them. To his right, the wall was covered in sheets of paper, more of Rick’s unintelligible scribbles on them, all connected by pins with bits of string draped over them, like some sort of serial killer timeline Morty would see on Quick Mysteries occasionally.

 

Morty stared, reading bits from each sheet, some in English, others in a language he couldn’t decipher. There were graphs and charts and diagrams for new inventions, blueprints for guns that Morty could remember seeing in the garage. Amongst all the science, Morty saw photos tacked to the wall as well, one of a Meeseeks, another of Abradolf Lincler, and one of someone he’d never seen before. Moving closer, Morty unpinned it and stared. It was a man, in his twenties with fluffy blue hair and stubble, laughing as he held a crying baby in his arms.

_T-t-this must be young Rick…_

 

Morty stared at it in slight shock for a moment before pocketing the photo, and stepped away from the wall. He tried to take it all in, to memorize the way that the papers crept their way off the wall and onto the ceiling, all correlated in some way, bits of Rick’s mind etched onto paper that had begun to curl at the edges. This was the longest he’d ever been in Rick’s room, and he wanted to savour it, to remember everything, seeing as it was all he had left.

 

Just below the wall sat Rick’s cot. A green blanket was tucked neatly over the edges, and a barely used pillow lay at the top. Morty took a step towards it, ignoring it for the time being, but now finding it impossible to avoid. He sat tentatively on the edge, letting his fingers dig into the soft green blanket and closed his eyes. Everything smelled like Rick, it all felt so much like Rick that Morty couldn’t help but grimace. It felt like Rick was there, but the silence said otherwise.

 

_A ghost, t-t-that’s what he’s become._

 

With a heavy sigh he lay back, his head on the pillow and lifted the blanket so he was underneath, curling up beneath it. He was warm, he was quiet, and he was surrounded by Rick. A tear escaped his eye, rolling it’s way down his cheek and dropping off into Rick’s pillow, and all Morty did was pull the blanket closer and willed himself to sleep.

 

_Rick, where’d you go?_

**Author's Note:**

> As always, let me know what you think! Comments and con-crit are always super helpful and appreciated, and never fail to make me write faster! ;)


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